Poetry among the ruins

Anyone growing up in Bengal circa the 1970s will remember ugly graffiti liberally bespattered on walls, showing Dracula-like figures (usually landlords, businessmen and the like) gorging on the blood of simple, plain folk who were the sons of the soil. To stop such blatant injustice, one was exhorted to go with the CPM (or occasionally Naxalites). Such political messages sat uneasily with my education at an elite missionary school, where i was told that communists are the scum of the earth. Given the canings and other punishments that were regular fare at this school run by Jesuit priests – their penchant for disciplining the boys put anything in Fifty Shades of Grey in the shade – i did not wholly disbelieve in vampires. On the contrary, i was inclined to attribute real-life basis to the gory graffiti plastered on walls.

Later, as i hung out with Kolkata’s Marxist intellectuals i discovered even they were not immune to the charms of RabindranathTagore, who loomed large over everything in Bengali life. This led me to jocularly describe Tagore acolytes among them as Rabindra-Marxists, on analogy with Marxist-Leninists, Followers of Mao Zedong Thought and the like (among whom tense phraseological disputations, which they treated extremely seriously, broke out quite often). They told me that Tagore had visited Stalin’s Russia, and liked what he saw there. Ergo, communism must be good.

A word of explanation is in order here. Tagore may have been a sublime poetic genius, but in Bengal it wasn’t enough to say this. Instead he was taken as the last word in all areas, ranging from poetics to politics to philosophy to education to what homeopathic remedy might work best for a particular ailment. I also discovered that Tagore had attended my school for a while, only to become its most illustrious dropout. This made me a Tagore acolyte as well, despite the ubiquity of Rabindrasangeet.

Tagore not only rooted for the simple folk, he championed everything that was simple and spontaneous, organic, joyous and free. Having imbibed Tagore’s influence, Bengalis acquired a reputation for being arty (sceptics would say arty-farty). Rooting for the organic, however, had the unfortunate effect of rooting out much of Bengal’s industry. It rooted out many Bengalis too, who were turned into economic refugees. Of course, separation from Ma MaatiManush would leave us pining for the organic even more. If the organic rooted out industry, the solution was neat. A whole industry could be organised around the organic.

By the time the Marxist government of BuddhadebBhattacharjee – himself the nephew of another iconic Bengali poet – realised the damage done, it was too late. And so in came Mamata, who stripped the Marx out of Rabindra-Marxism so that pure Rabindra-ism reigned. People living close to major crossings in Kolkata were treated to Rabindrasangeet blaring from loudspeakers, night and day. It’s said that in order to break down al-Qaida prisoners, American jailers played rock music close to their cells without respite. I suspect that if Tagore were reborn in today’s Bengal, he would blanch at some of the manifestations of Rabindra-ism on display.

Which prompts an infidel thought. Would Bengal have been different, had it worshipped a different Tagore? What if along with Rabindranath, it had taken his grandfather Dwarkanath too as role model? The ‘prince’, as he was known, must have been one of the early apostles of globalisation as he built an economic empire single-handed. Friend of Rammohan Roy, he was one of the first Indian industrialists and entrepreneurs. An early rationalist, he cared a fig for taboos, defying pandits‘ injunctions against sailing the ‘black waters’ to England. Perhaps the pandits‘ curses finally came true. Not only did Dwarkanath die in England (and was subsequently pretty much effaced from Bengal’s history), Bengal itself gave up on economic dynamism and declined into political feuds punctuated by poetic melancholia.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

After drinking at various disciplinary streams, which included an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur and a doctorate in literature from the University of Pennsylvania, Swagato Ganguly now edits “The Times of Ideas”, the editorial page of the Times of India. He’s fascinated by ideas in all shapes, sizes and guises, whether well-cooked or medium-rare – but especially as they motivate everyday living. He’s also interested in the Indian middle class, in its uniqueness as well as globality. In his view Indian politics is torn between ideological extremes, and would do well to discover a liberal middle. His biggest weaknesses are movies, art, and brewing and sipping a good cup of coffee, for which he gets little time.

After drinking at various disciplinary streams, which included an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur and a doctorate in literature from the University of Pe. . .

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Author

After drinking at various disciplinary streams, which included an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur and a doctorate in literature from the University of Pennsylvania, Swagato Ganguly now edits “The Times of Ideas”, the editorial page of the Times of India. He’s fascinated by ideas in all shapes, sizes and guises, whether well-cooked or medium-rare – but especially as they motivate everyday living. He’s also interested in the Indian middle class, in its uniqueness as well as globality. In his view Indian politics is torn between ideological extremes, and would do well to discover a liberal middle. His biggest weaknesses are movies, art, and brewing and sipping a good cup of coffee, for which he gets little time.

After drinking at various disciplinary streams, which included an engineering degree from IIT Kanpur and a doctorate in literature from the University of Pe. . .